


Mercy

by glittergritted



Category: Saw (Movies)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Gunshot Wounds, Hospitalization, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Torture, Rescue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-29
Updated: 2017-01-29
Packaged: 2018-09-14 14:44:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9186827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glittergritted/pseuds/glittergritted
Summary: What a cliché ass title. Whatever, the flashbacks in Saw III didn't fucking happen and that's the end of it.





	

Amanda knew better than this. Or at least she thought she did. That was why she had brought the grocery bag, unfurled beside her, lying flat on the tiled floor. She had stolen into that room with every intention of putting an end to this, her back tingling with paranoia of being watched, because she knew she shouldn’t be there. The air was thick and stale, and she wondered how Adam’s lungs still breathed it in, how his blood-soaked chest continued to rise and fall after all this time. _All this time_. How long had it really been?  
  
Him, the poor pawn, sitting alone in there, surrounded by decay. Only a few steps behind his cellmate in dying. _Should be dead by now, with all that blood_. How long?  
  
Amanda exhaled a long, uneven breath, fingers curling into the fabric of her pants, trying to remember. When she looked at the clock before leaving that night, it had read 1:13AM. Twenty-five hours—that was how long it had been since he’d woken up. Nineteen hours—that was how long it had been since the game ended.  
  
“Fuck—” Crinkling of plastic clutched in bony fingers, punctured by yellowed nails. “Adam—” Her voice came out in broken sobs. In her pocket, the hard points of the spare key dug into her flesh.  
  
Amanda’s hand abandoned the bag, reaching into the shallow pocket and pulling out the key instead. Her hands shook hard as her breathing became erratic. Shoving the key into the shackle’s lock, hearing the hard metal _clank_ on the floor as it fell away from Adam’s ankle, she knew she wasn’t thinking clearly. She knew how disappointed John would be when he found out—and he would surely find out. After all he did for her, after everything the one person who gave a fuck about her did to save her, this was how she was repaying him. _This_ , going against his wishes to the highest degree. There was no way John wouldn’t know, somehow, someway, even if neither Amanda nor Lawrence ever spoke of Adam Stanheight again, never looked at each other like they had conspired to save a condemned man’s life. She would have to leave, get as far away as possible from the life she had only _just_ rebuilt.  
  
Her, _the only survivor of Jigsaw’s games_ —as far as the police were concerned. That was all she would ever be, _the survivor, the druggie,_ if she didn’t just pick up the bag and put it over Adam’s head until he stopped kicking. _Mercy_. A greater mercy than setting him out to live with what had been done to him—what Amanda had helped do to him.  
  
But the voice in her head, that nagging voice, that voice that told her Lawrence was right— _Even he doesn’t deserve this._ —just wouldn’t shut up. Amanda’s hands shook Adam’s good shoulder, gently then forcefully, her heart revving like an engine when he awoke with a sharp inhale.  
  
_What was she doing?_  
  
In the rectangle of light coming in through the open door, she saw his green eyes slide over to look at her—or, at least, in the direction of her—awake, alive, but hurting. Heavy. Delirious. Something panged inside her chest at the sight of him, and she knew she had to hurry up and get him out of that godforsaken tomb, before she changed her mind, before she had to live with this guilt forever. This kind of suffering, this kind of pain, wasn’t reserved for someone who just took pictures, no matter the kind—even she knew that. Tears stung her eyes as she pushed herself beyond the point of no return, grabbing onto the soft white of his t-shirt, pulling him away from the wall.  
  
“C’mon,” she whimpered, pleading with him. “You gotta help me.”

* * *

The voice was distant, lost in the harsh chill of the room that gnawed through his waning muscle down to his bone marrow. Everything was dreamlike, his eyes refusing to open as if weighed down by sleep. In truth, sleep and consciousness had blended together, indecipherable, a long time ago. The act of prying open his eyelids made the sockets which held his weary eyes burn and ache.  
  
Slowly, awareness came to his downy, grayed-out head. One by one, he put the pieces of the voice together. It was a woman’s voice—and it was _real_. He gave up hope after he had screamed his throat raw, torn bloody slits in the skin of his ankle trying to tear himself away. When he had yelled so hard for someone, anyone, that he could have sworn he could taste blood rising up the base of his tongue, and naught but vacant, sepulchral silence befell him and the dead body beside him—the body _he_ had put there—Adam finally slumped back. He slumped back and let his exhausted muscles relax, breathing in the putrid, sour air that choked him, letting the gaping holes in his shoulder throb and fester with little protest. Each agonizing pulse reminded him of the muzzle of that gun, and the shaking hand that pulled the trigger, the memory so far away now.  
  
When the hands on his body moved him, everything inside switched on again. While he had surely been breathing this entire time, Adam felt his lungs expand and contract inside his stiffened chest with clarity, and heard the bone rattle of his breath struggle through parted lips, chapped and flaking. The dry hollowness that extended from his esophagus to the pit of his stomach stabbed at him. The sanguine blood—most of it his, some of it not—dried and coagulated along the length of his arm and soaked through his shirt, was keenly felt against his skin as it came to life. An opaque membrane had developed around his senses, a gelatinous callus burst now by the intrusion of piercing light and that fractured voice. His eyes shut hard against an illumination too soft to touch anyone else’s eyes as harshly as it did his.  
  
“I’m gonna get you out of here.”  
  
Adam’s breath hitched. His heart rose to the base of his throat, its thumping reverberation practically throwing him off-kilter with its unfamiliar rhythm. He fought to move his limbs, take what minuscule weight he had upon himself again. The urge to run was itching at the soles of his feet again, cold nerve endings alighting again as the meaning of those words sunk in.  
  
Along with everything else, he had given up on Lawrence’s promise of help, as well. Desperate on both ends, perhaps neither party ever really believed it was possible beyond the immediate comfort such a word brought a man who was bleeding to death. But even with the living presence beside him, with his mind slowly coming back from the edge, Adam hesitated to assume where she came from, or whom had sent her. Resolutely and morbidly skeptical in the innumerable hours since a dead man had risen from the floor and left Adam to die, his mind went back to the nature of their _game_ , and the ultimate goal of his fellow player. At the end of the day, his life had been the lowest on the totem pole of whom Lawrence Gordon wanted to see daylight that morning.  
  
“Wh—” Adam tried to speak, but his throat was sandpaper. The space about his vocal cords felt embedded with shards of glass. Still, he persisted, pawing his heavy hands toward the aura of body heat to his left. “Who— _sh_ —…who are…”  
  
Her face, distantly backlit, right in front of his, was featureless save for the scant outlines of her cheekbones and the vague movements of her blinking eyes and moving mouth. Adam forced his eyes to focus on her, and the whiteness of her eyes and teeth became just slightly visible through the black. It helped steady his assuredness that he wasn’t hallucinating this time—that there was a real person right in front of him. He never thought he’d see something like that again.  
  
_Stand up_. “Stand up,” she was telling him. The idea seemed so simple, something ingrained that had once required no thought at all. Now, his legs felt like they would buckle at the slightest pressure, fixed and leaden. He was sure they would—but he had to try. He nodded, feeling his brain sloshing around in his skull like soup, and took a sharp breath through an open mouth. He heard something reminiscent of his voice mutter, “Okay. Okay,” and reached out in front of himself to find the woman’s shoulder, pressing his fingers into her shirt. Adam thought for a moment that he would reach out to find no one, an absent space occupied only by a figment of his imagination.  
  
But she was _there_. Right there, right in front of him, her arms around him pulling him up to stand.  
  
A low groan escaped him, and a rough cough followed a second later. The weight placed upon his knees sent a scalding knife of pain prodding through the muscles and tendons there, and he felt a million tiny pricks in the soles of his feet. Dizziness threw the room off-balance for a moment, but he gripped hard on the woman’s arm to stay upright. The hole through his shoulder bit and stung and he gritted his teeth hard, his strained throat unable to produce much more than a hitched mewl in involuntary response to the infected wound’s screaming.  
  
Walking was a monster Adam didn’t think he could defeat, aching muscles lacking stimulation for hours— _Days?_ —threatening to collapse underneath him with every small, shuffling step. Lungs strained to breath and filter the fetid air being fed to them, the harsh, rancid miasma of rot and corruption bringing up bile to burn Adam’s throat.  
  
Her voice, as well as the sounds of her struggle, willed him on.  
  
Adam felt every second of the ascent from _wherever he had been_. Even in the air of the hallways outside of that bathroom was fresh, adrenalin returning his motor skills for the time being. His eyes were constantly on the floor, making sure he didn’t trip over himself in the haste of the moment. He thought he walked across sticky, cold blood— _Lawrence’s blood?_ —on the way out, but he didn’t stop to make sure.  
  
He gasped hard when the autumn chill hit him, the cold of the air outside different, more refreshing, than the cold of his tomb. Wind stirred strands of his hair, raised bumps along his skin. His soaked shirt clung to him, ice-cold in the breeze. At the sound of a car door clicking open, Adam found himself smiling. _Smiling_. Just so, barely, the curl of his lips just enough for him to notice. The hands that had helped him thus far pushed him into the back seat, and he fell across the soft upholstery with a huff. Fingers caked with grime gripped hard onto the edge of the seat, his whisper of a smile turning into a grimace at the sharp spike of pain through his entire right side instigated by the flex of his muscles.  
  
“Stay awake, okay?” the voice said from the front seat, frantic, urgent, clearer now. Adam strained his eyes to find the rear-view mirror. In it: the very tips of pointed dark hair. Her small voice pleaded with him again as she started the car. “Don’t you fucking fall asleep on me, okay?”  
  
“O-okay.” The motion of the car made his stomach turn, but the muscles about his throat ached too badly to let anything up.  
  
Contrary to his agreement, Adam blinked in and out as they went. It felt like only seconds passed until the car stopped again, and the door swung open to let in more of the night’s cold air. He vaguely felt hands grab at him and pull him out of the car, the bleariness in his head taking over again as his adrenalin faded. He coughed hard, lurching over with the exertion. Blood tinted his teeth pink.  
  
“C’mon. It’s okay.”

* * *

Amanda thought briefly about taking him inside the hospital emergency room and presenting him to the staff in-person, telling them exactly who he was and what was wrong with him. But a flurry of thoughts swirled around her mind in an eddy as her shoes reached the raised concrete before the double doors, Adam’s skinny arm slung over her shoulder.  
  
People knew her face. How long had it been since she’d been plastered across the news? They knew her _name_. In Los Angeles the circulation of horrific news was blindingly quick, attention never staying on one incident, or one victim, for long. Awful things happened every day, new compelling outlets for pity arising all the time. But Amanda Young, the _Jigsaw survivor_ , people still loved to talk about her. The issue with the reporter—that had solidified it.  
  
Any headline with the words “Jigsaw Killer” was an instant hit. Of course someone in there would recognize her, and of course they would identify Amanda Young as the one who brought in this sickly, broken man. In short order, speculation would run rampant and Adam would be labeled as a victim, too. A survivor in his own right, if he survived whatever infection had made itself at home in the tissue of his shoulder. She knew firsthand that a life as the next tasty morsel for the media to snack on was no life for a recluse.  
  
Deciding she couldn’t waste any more time thinking, Amanda heaved forward and lay Adam down on the cool pavement. The overhead lights lit up the blood still clinging to his skin in ugly fluorescence. Walking over his body in large strides, Amanda ran up to the double doors, clenched her fist, and banged on them hard. “Hey!” her voice scraped out. “Need help out here!”  
  
The shuffling footfalls from the other side sent her sprinting across the asphalt, back into the shadows of the parking lot, half-freezing air nipping at her lungs. Amanda threw her arms out to stop her momentum on the hood of her car, scrawny hands sprawling across its lackluster paint job as she ducked behind it. She pressed her hand into the crook of her neck as she attempted to steady her breathing, heavy and panting from running. As she peaked out around the front of the car, bright light from within the emergency room burst out from behind thrown-open doors, and the urgent, surprised shouts from nurses and emergency room technicians echoed in the parking lot.  
  
Amanda slowly looked away as the doors swung shut again. She felt an odd sense of helplessness. Adam’s life had been in her hands and her hands alone not half an hour ago. Now, his life was in a hundred hands that weren’t hers. She slumped down against the wheelwell, knees falling against the ground in what she came to realize a moment later was _relief_. The world was quiet again, for the first time in a long time—probably for the last time. The back of her head pressed against cold metal as she angled her eyes up to look at the sky. Only a few stars were visible in the night sky, tiny specks of glitter scattered across a black canvas. She made a point to look at them for a long time as she recollected herself. She doubted she would ever know a moment as peaceful as this one again.

* * *

“Good morning, Adam.”  
  
_Rise and shine._  
  
The woman’s voice cut through the cottony-thick fog of waning painkillers and sleeping aids, unfamiliar and perplexing to Adam’s ears. A hard dullness made itself known in his shoulder as he shifted, a twisting discomfort that would soon develop into a sharp burning sensation when the drugs wore off. “Wh—” he started, the single syllable slurred, stopped short by the astounding dryness of his throat. It took him a moment to register the polystyrene cup held up to his face, a bent plastic draw dangling over the lip, but once he did he drank thankfully.  
  
Despite this not being the first time he had awoken in those starch-stiff hospital sheets, the bright lights—actually dimmed lower than usual after he had exhibited high sensitivity to them—still pained him. Through a squint, he realized there were _two_ people standing over his bed: the female nurse who gave him water, and a female doctor who held a clipboard in the crook of one arm as she tucked a loose strand of kinky black hair behind her ear.  
  
The doctor smiled. “That’s the first time you’ve taken liquids orally, Adam,” she said, leaning closer to him, speaking softly. “Very nice. You think you’re awake enough to talk to me about that shoulder, now?”  
  
He wondered how long he’d been asleep, and how many times she’d tried to do just that. The occasions where he’d woken up before seemed like short snippets of dreams, not things that really happened. No more real than his memories of being dragged out of his tomb seemed to be—not nearly as real as those six hours felt. There was no illusion there, the weight of them still heavy on his chest, making it hard to breathe. But he breathed, and the air was _clean_ , and wonderful.  
  
Slowly, carefully, he moved his left hand out from beneath the thin white blanket he lay under, and looked at his bruised fingers as he splayed them. “Sure.” The word practically scratched its way out of his mouth, and suddenly he felt incomprehensibly thirsty again. The nurse appeared to pick up on that—or maybe she just saw how hard he winced after speaking a single word—and presented him with the cup again.  
  
“The bullet made a clean pass through your shoulder,” the doctor said, deep chestnut eyes reading over her clipboard. Adam couldn’t focus his eyes on her name tag, and he wished that her introducing herself by name wasn’t a blurry half-dream in a distant corner of his brain. “Only a couple of fragments had to be removed in surgery. As for the infection, we think you’re finally out of the woods. We weren’t sure there for a while, but we’ve got you on some pretty hefty antibiotics, and we had to remove some of the tissue that had necrotized around the exit wound.”  
  
_You’re just wounded, in the shoulder._  
  
The voice came back to him in a wave, flooding his ears and overlapping the doctor’s tranquil explanation. Adam felt his stomach clench and dip, the phantom grasp of a trembling hand squeezing his arm tight. He was too exhausted to even lurch over the side of the bed to vomit, so he remained still, and swallowed down hard what threatened to come up. He disguised his involuntary gasp of breath with moving to clutch his right arm, tight against his body in a sling.  
  
He missed a few words, but caught on to the gist easily enough. “With physical therapy, you may very well regain ninety to ninety-five percent mobility over time. The cuts on your ankle healed up very nicely, as well; you should be able to put pressure on it in no time. You’re very lucky. Do you have any questions?”  
  
Adam felt his head sinking into the pillow, though it stayed stationary. He closed his eyes in a long blink, gritting his molars so hard he thought they may break. Finally, he sighed. “What’s your name?”  
  
The doctor smiled warmly, tilting her head to one side. “My name is Leslie Grove,” she said. “But that’s Doctor Grove to you.” She pointed an index finger at him playfully. “Now, if you don’t mind, now that you’re lucid, I have some questions I’d like to ask _you_.”  
  
Adam shrugged as best he could. “Okay.”  
  
Dr. Grove pulled up a hard-bottomed chair and took a seat, laying her clipboard on her lap with her fingers laced atop the paper. Her hair fell out from behind her ear where she’d left it, the strand brushing against her light brown skin and framing her jaw. “I really don’t know much about you other than your first name. Given that I think we were pretty lucky you were able to mumble _anything_ when we asked you who you were, I was happy enough to take it. Can you give me your last name?”  
  
“S—” Adam winced again. The more he talked, the more clarity was given to how swollen and aching his throat was, rather than just dry. “Stanheight.”  
  
“Stanheight,” Dr. Grove parroted, nodding decisively. Now he could be identified, properly cataloged, his emergency contacts tracked down—at least, that’s probably was she was thinking. Adam hadn’t had an emergency contact in years. “Now, you don’t have to tell me this, but—and the last thing I want is to give you any more stress—the LAPD have said they’d like to speak with you, and I figure it might make things easier on you if you tell me, and I can tell them for you. At least to start with, since they’ll want an answer directly from you at some point, anyway—but only when you’re feeling better.”  
  
Adam blinked at her, more aware now, some of the clouds clearing away. “Tell you what?” he asked.  
  
“How you got shot,” she answered gently, “and where, if you remember. Naturally, they want to know if they should look into…” Dr. Grove spread her hands, mulling over her words, chewing on something she wasn’t sure how to say, “attempted murder? Gang violence? Like I said, you don’t have to tell anyone anything until you’re ready, Adam, but it’s important you give as many details as possible. Who shot you, how you knew them.”  
  
He almost felt like laughing, but his head felt buoyant, so weightless and delicate he feared he may crack his skull if he jostled it with mirth. When faced with the silence that drew on for miles beyond the end of her sentence, Adam shut his eyes and lay his head back again. In the blackness, he saw the body. He saw it lift itself up from the floor, alive, and heard it breathe out that ragged breath, heard it _speak to him_. Everything in his body grew hot with anger. “Can’t.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“I can’t…tell you,” Adam said, raising his head slowly. He touched his face with his left hand and held it, his fingertips grazing his hairline.  
  
“Why can’t you, Adam?”  
  
He looked into her eyes, dropping his hand to feel the fabric of his sling. “’Cause I don’t remember.”  
  
The doctor’s brow knit tightly, but softened a moment later in understanding. “You can’t remember who shot you?”  
  
_You have to die. I'm sorry._  
  
“ _No_ ,” Adam said, his voice needing no artificial tweaking to sound convincing. “I can’t. I just…don’t remember.”  
  
“Do you remember where it happened? A street you were near, a building you’d recognize—”  
  
“No,” he said, through clenched teeth. “I can’t remember anything. I just…”  
  
His eyes trailed off beyond the Dr. Grove’s mildly disappointed face. His head pounded, the pain in his shoulder and down his arm throbbing in tandem with the stabbing behind his eyes. “I just…”  
  
_Game over._  
  
Maybe if he said it enough, the memories really would vanish.  
  
Maybe.  
  
“I don’t remember. Sorry.”

**Author's Note:**

> What a cliché ass title. Whatever, the flashbacks in Saw III didn't fucking happen and that's the end of it.


End file.
